Northanger Abbey (2007)

For example poor Catherine, when she is kicked out of Northanger Abbey for not being wealthy enough, is depicted as being squeezed between a motley crew of passengers on the common coach. In the novel she is able to travel post.It is wonderful to see Jane Austen's characters come to life in this movie: Mrs. Allen who talks of nothing but wardrobe. Mr. John Thorpe, coarse, but first and foremost a liar. Isabella Thorpe, duplicitous and manic. Lacking merit, she portrays herself as having it. Mr. Tilney, mildly humorous. Catherine, an affectionate nature, a bit silly, loyal. General Tilney, a materialistic status seeker, also a hypocrite, who has learned superficially what is expected of a charming man, and in his efforts to appear so never expresses any true emotion. Who is a roiling, boiling stew of anger and irritation underneath the surface. He always seems to be expressing the opposite of what he feels. Since he sees his true feelings as being socially unacceptable, the characters are always relieved when he goes away.By showing Isabella Thorpe in bed with Captain Tilney, leaving her ruined, the movie goes beyond what Jane Austen wrote.This movie shows John Thorpe telling General Tilney of Catherine Morland's wealthy expectations. This is the act of someone who when he feels positively about something or someone, will make up a series of positive and complimentary lies or when disappointed as he was by Catherine's rejection of his attentions, will then make up a series of negative, uncomplimentary lies. He doesn't really lie like Isabella and General Tilney do, because their true feelings are not socially acceptable. He lies because he doesn't know the difference between the truth and his own fantasies or because the truth stands in the way of him getting what he wants.This movie has a vibrancy that makes it a little exciting, even though Jane Austen's writings are not really exciting.

I did not watch this completely. I could not bear it. Everything was wrong.At first I thought: Interesting take on Henry Tilney, make him a little more ...glib, I think, fits.But then I found it false and implausible - bad acting did not help.Mrs Allen is too sweet. Missed the chance for authentic portrayal - she is a superficial, self-centered, nice enough simpleton, such a great foundation for caricature (Jane Austen was a genius at that!) Mr Allen too wordy in general.Isabella is FAR TOO NICE. She is supposed to be chatty, self-centered in a bad way, befriending Catherine with her own motives in mind.John Thorpe - completely wrong - oh my...another chance of caricature (and fun!!!) lost.Seems to be they just took the script from the 1986 version and juiced it up a bit (not that I watched that one through...life is short, and at least I want to decide what I waste it on - not this!!!) - a Roman bath scene??? Hello??? lol Catherine - oh Catherine. I love Catherine,naive and simple as she might be. Here she flirts, pouts and suffers from hormonal overflow - yucky! That they used a voice over with verbatim parts from the novel makes this even more ---- HORRID!!!:-) As has been stated here: If you don't do Jane Austen to the book, leave it! (Or take better script writers, actors and directors - I'm not adverse to interesting adaptations - like Clueless for Emma - but this is unnecessary drab)

This was one of three Jane Austen adaptations produced by the British television station ITV in 2007, the others being "Mansfield Park" and "Persuasion". Together with Joe Wright's "Pride and Prejudice" from 2005, the Bollywood adaptation "Bride and Prejudice" and the biopic "Becoming Jane", these can be regarded as part of a second cycle of Austen films, the first having taken place in the middle and late nineties. I think the reason why ITV chose these three novels is that, cinematically speaking, they are less familiar than Austen's other works. I am not aware of any previous film of "Northanger Abbey" and, although versions of "Persuasion" and "Mansfield Park" were made during the first great Austen cycle, neither aroused as much interest as, say, the Emma Thompson/Kate Winslet "Sense and Sensibility" or the Gwyneth Paltrow "Emma".Austen's heroines can be divided into two categories. On the one hand there are lively, high-spirited ones like Elizabeth Bennett, Emma Woodhouse or Marianne Dashwood; on the other there are quieter, more demure ones like Fanny Price, Anne Elliot or Marianne's sister Elinor. The makers of "Northanger Abbey" were fortunate in that the novel's heroine, Catherine Morland, falls firmly into the first category, as Austen's quieter heroines can be difficult to bring to life on the screen. Only Emma Thompson has really succeeded in this, largely by making Elinor considerably older than she is in the novel. The two versions of "Mansfield Park" both try transfer Fanny into the outgoing, extrovert category, but both versions were heavily criticised by purist Janeites. One of Austen's aims in writing the novel was to satirise the Romantic movement in literature, particularly the vogue for "Gothic" novels by the likes of Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis. (This vogue had gripped England in the 1790s, when Austen's novel was originally written, and persisted into the 1810s, when it was finally published). Unlike most of the other stately homes which feature in Austen's works, Northanger Abbey, the house which gives its name to the book, is not a Classical mansion but a rambling Gothic castle. When the naïve teenage heroine Catherine is invited to stay at the Abbey, the home of her friends the Tilney family, her over-fertile imagination leads her to believe that she is living in a Gothic romance and that her stern, forbidding host, General Tilney, is guilty of the murder of his wife, who died suddenly several years earlier. This satire on the Gothic was only part of Austen's wider theme, the difference between reality and illusion. The novel tells the story of Catherine's coming-of-age, of how she learns not only the difference between fiction and real life but also the difference between what people seem and what they really are. Several people whom Catherine believes she can trust turn out to be thoroughly untrustworthy. Her close friend Isabella, who shares and encourages her taste for Gothic fiction, turns out to be shallow and fickle. Isabella's brother John is an unreliable braggart and gossip. Captain Frederick Tilney, the General's elder son, appears to be a gallant army officer, but turns out to be a heartless seducer. Even the General himself, although he may not be a murderer, turns out to be arrogant, snobbish and thoroughly unpleasant. On the other hand, some of Catherine's friends prove their true worth, such as the General's daughter Eleanor and his younger clergyman son Henry, who eventually wins Catherine's heart. In my view, "Northanger Abbey" is the strongest of the three ITV Austen adaptations. "Persuasion" was just dull, and its heroine Sally Hawkins duller still. As for "Mansfield Park", I personally (unlike many) liked Billie Piper's interpretation of the role of Fanny, but I felt that she received little support from the other cast members, apart from Hayley Attwell's Mary Crawford. In "Northanger Abbey", however, although there are no well-known names among the cast, the acting is all of a high standard. Felicity Jones made a fresh and delightful heroine and she received good support from, among others, J J Feild as Henry, Carey Mulligan as Isabella and Liam Cunningham as the autocratic General. I have in the past been critical of some of Andrew Davies' adaptations of literary works for the screen, such as the recent "Brideshead Revisited", but in this case he did a good job, producing an intelligent screenplay with a fine understanding of Austen's novel. The one thing I did not like was the "bathtub" scene, but then Davies likes to get a bit of sex into all his adaptations. 7/10

i truly loved this movie. i thought it was done and carried you along with Catherine as she fell in love with henry. i wish that it had gone into a little more detail at times, but i am sure that time restrictions played a big part in that. the actors did a good job in portraying their characters, although i found some of this disjointed as well at times, such as when henry, Eleanor and Catherine come back from their walk and the general comes down the stairs to invite her to northanger Abby, it is as if Eleanor and henry have disappeared instead of standing beside Catherine as they would have been normally, i must say i loved the way that Catherine backed henry into shrubbery as she was kissing him, although i wish they had gone into Eleanor's romance a little more. but overall i am glad i bought this movie as well.